Police guard a wooden boat carrying Rohingya migrants from Burma in April 2013. The migrants, who were heading for Australia, were found stranded on Aceh island.
Photograph: Stringer Indonesia / Reuters/Reuters

Has Australia paid people smugglers to return asylum seekers?

Explosive claims have been lobbed in the last week that the Australian government has taken a further step in its “stop the boats” policy and begun paying people smugglers to turn those boats around.

A boat ferrying around 65 asylum seekers from Indonesia, aiming for New Zealand, was reportedly intercepted by Australian authorities in May and forced to turn back.

Nazmul Hassan from Bangladesh – who said he was on board the boat – told Radio New Zealand that officials made payments to the captain and crew to take the passengers back to Indonesia.

Now Indonesian police authorities have backed the allegations, showing off money seized from people smugglers that they say was paid by Australian officials.

A Sri Lankan asylum seeker is the first to recount on camera his experience of being aboard a boat that was turned away from Australia after immigration authorities allegedly paid the smugglers.

General Endang Sunjaya, police chief of Nusa Tenggara Timur province, said the cash – $31,000 in US dollars – was given to six crew members by an Australian official, who, he told reporters, was reportedly a spy, in civilian clothing, aboard a customs vessel.

Australian sailors then transferred the 65 asylum seekers – who had come originally from Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka – to two smaller boats and sent them back to Indonesia, said Endang: “We have given you the evidence. It’s now up to you and other organisations to demand an answer from the Australian government.”

A photo released by Indonesian police showing what they say is US$31,000 Australia paid to people smugglers to return asylum seekers to Indonesia. Photograph: Indonesian police/ABC News

What does the Australian government say?

Officially: not much.

The Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton initially denied the payment claims – as did foreign minister Julie Bishop – before defaulting to what has since been the stock government line: “It’s been a longstanding policy of the government not to comment on on-water matters.”

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has refused to rule out the tactic, saying his government would do “whatever we need to do” and was determined to “stop the boats, by hook or by crook”:

I am proud of the work that our border protection agencies have done. I really am proud of the work that they’ve done and they’ve been incredibly creative in coming up with a whole range of strategies to break this evil trade …

There are all sorts of things that our security agencies do that they need to do to protect our country and many of those things just should never be discussed in public. Operational matters, when it comes to national security, are never discussed in public and that’s the way it should be.

If a state were to give money to smugglers and instruct them where to take people, it is possible that the state itself could be engaged in, or an accomplice to, a people smuggling operation. Whether or not such a payment would amount to a criminal offence would depend on the particular facts of the case.

Any investigation into a possible breach of Australia’s Criminal Code outlawing people smuggling would have to be given the green light by the attorney general, George Brandis, who has already said that the government “has at all times complied with the law”.

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the government needed to be open about whether payments were made:

Payments to individuals to turn a boat around and take asylum seekers to Indonesia may be highly illegal. The trafficking of people against their will is a serious crime.

The Australian government must give a full and accurate account of what has occurred.

And Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, said such payments could create a “pull factor” for people traffickers.

Where are the asylum seekers coming from?

The boats come mainly from Indonesia, which serves as a transit country from where migrants from various countries attempt to leave for Australia or New Zealand.

Many – as in the case reportedly involving payment – come from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma. The latter, in particular, has witnessed an exodus of Muslim Rohingya people – not recognised as citizens in Burma – and it is estimated that as many as one in 10 of the 1.1million Rohingya has fled by boat (though not all will head to Australian waters).

Others come from conflict-riven countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

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And where do they go?

The Australian government says its “stop the boats” policy has worked and boatloads of asylum seekers are no longer making it to the country’s shores.

Some of those intercepted are sent to detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, which have been beset by allegations of sexual assault and other abuses against detainees.

So, has ‘turn back the boats’ been a success?

The current Australian government says 1,200 people died attempting to cross the ocean under the previous Labor administration and claims it has put a stop to those deaths with its “whatever it takes” policy.

Abbott has said the rest of the world – particularly Europe, which is facing its own migrant crisis – could learn from Australia’s hardline policies: boats of asylum seekers at sea will be turned away; they will be forced to live in detention centres offshore across the Pacific; and they are told that they will never be resettled in Australia.